Green Gloves
by Heather F.C
Summary: Over a year after Russia, Felicity decides she does not like bombshells.
1. Chapter 1

His text wakes her up from her light sleep. Locating her glasses, she reads it. "I am at the balcony." She grabs her robe and is at her balcony in seconds. He is standing in one corner, still wearing his suit from the party they were at earlier.

"Hey." He turns to her when he notices her presence.

"Hi." She cannot help but smile. Despite the day they had, despite how tired he has been, he still looks handsome and manages to crack a smile at her. "Couldn't sleep?"

He shakes his head. "I had too many thoughts." he says as he leans against the railing. "Did I wake you?"

"I wasn't in the REM cycle yet." She shrugs. "Want to talk?"

"Not really." he replies as she stands next to him. "Beautiful night."

For minutes, they stand next to each other in silence, looking over Starling City from Felicity's new apartment's balcony. Her apartment was the scene of crime for their last encounter with the Dark Archer who hadn't been killed apparently the night Glades fell and his son died, and at that apartment he finally fell to his death and in a twist of fate, she was kicked out from the apartment by her landlady for hosting the fight that ended the Dark Archer's reign of terror.

"Are you cold?" he asks as she shivers lightly. Her robe is short and she is standing barefoot in the chill of the night. Without waiting for her reply, he takes his jacket off and puts it on her shoulders.

"Thanks." she murmurs under her breath. "Did Laurel make it safe home?"

"Yeah, she did." He almost whispers. "I made it sure she did. She even invited me over for a nightcap, but I turned her down."

It wasn't every day that Laurel Lance had her life saved by her own sister and then invited the man she held responsible for her alleged death over to her apartment. Felicity thought what she would do if she knew the truth. She understood Sara's reasons to still keep her identity secret from her sister, but felt sorry for both of them. The older needs reassurance in her life after all the losses she suffered and the younger needs some hope to light her dark life. She wonders how big of a burden it must be to lie to your loved ones about your very own existence, then thinks about her own life and Oliver's and realizes that their lives aren't that different since they keep the people closest to them in the dark about their secret life.

"Not even for a friendly chat over coffee? Cut the girl some slack, she has been through a lot."

What falls from her lips surprises her, and evidently Oliver as well. "Did you just defend Laurel Lance? I thought you hated her."

Felicity in some parts does hate Laurel especially after she sued her for a misunderstanding, blaming her for several hackings made into the system of the DA's office but she was acquitted because she had nothing to do with the hackings and was simply being framed, and even though they weren't friends to begin with, things were now more difficult. Laurel wouldn't even look at her when they were in the same room.

"I am not her biggest fan, but she is one of your oldest friends and you should be there for her."

Her response brings a grin on his face, one that she hasn't seen for a year now. "Felicity Smoak, you are a big softie."

"I won't deny it and one of us needs to be the softie. We can't brood like you all the time."

She lets out a small yawn and decides to walk to the other end of the balcony, which is only five steps away. He follows her immediately. "So did you have fun at the party? You disappeared with Paul right after the cops showed up."

"He decided to surprise me by coming back from his business trip early." she answers. "We left and went for dinner. Sorry I didn't inform you."

He doesn't know whether her last statement holds a tone of bitterness, but hopes it does not. Being overprotective of her is like a bad habit he cannot quit. "That is nice of him, cutting his trip short for you."

She nods in agreement. "He really doesn't like Central City. Who can blame him?"

"Aren't you from Central City?" he questions, raising an eyebrow.

"Home isn't where you are born, it is where you make it." Her reply is short and to the point and makes him think. He knows his home is Starling City, but he is sure that it is not because he was born there. Coming back from the island to the city hadn't felt like coming home, but now, almost three years later, whenever he leaves the city even for the shortest excursion, he always feels like he is coming back home when he returns.

He takes advantage of her silence and looks at her. Gone is the make-up from earlier the night, her hair is held up in a ponytail with the curls he had missed. She was wearing a long black dress, it is now replaced by the pink robe under his jacket that is too big for her and her pajama shorts that show off her legs. Noticing the green nail polish on her feet makes him smile. She stays silent and he realizes that over the last year, she has become silent in his presence. Gone are her ramblings and occasional sexual innuendos. He realizes that he misses her ramblings.

She finally breaks her silence and speaks in a rushed, almost inaudible tone that makes him think that she just wants to get it out of her chest. "Paul asked me to marry him."

He feels like somebody punched him in the gut. He feels like the air has left his lungs. It makes him remember the terror he felt seeing the Dark Archer back from the dead, holding Felicity hostage in his arms. He doesn't say anything, unsure of what he actually has to say.

"That was his surprise. He took me to dinner and proposed."

He shouldn't be really shocked. According to Digg, it could have happened any moment. They had been dating for over a year and Paul always attended the occasional office party in her arm even though he was traveling a lot. He didn't know what exactly Paul was doing, it had something to do with some hedgefund involving many companies all over the country. Paul wasn't a bad guy, he had done his background check on him. He just didn't think the guy actually had the guts to propose.

"I didn't say anything." she says, not looking at him. "He was on one knee for minutes, everyone was looking at us, but I couldn't say anything. I didn't say yes." That makes Oliver turn and look at her. Her head is down. "But I didn't say no either. I asked him to give me time. I am pretty sure he was really embarrassed, but you cannot just leave a bombshell like that on someone in front of strangers. It is like those kiss-cams at basketball games, there is too much pressure and the results are varying. You kiss for the sake of others and not because you want to. It is quite stressful. Not that I have ever been on one."

He thinks that this is the most rambling she has done in a year and it is like music to his ears. He wonders if he is being rude by not saying a thing, but in reality, he doesn't have any valuable comments to the situation. So he comes up with what has been tormenting him for the longest time. "Do you love him?"

Now it is her turn to be taken aback. She doesn't say anything, turns her back and places her elbows on the railing. She pouts and puffs, then takes her glasses off and rubs over her eyes with the back of her hands. "I can love him." she finally says.

He doesn't know whether he should sigh in relief because she doesn't love him or in agony because she could. They are a good match on paper. He has a trouble-free life that doesn't involve wearing a green leather suit and jumping off rooftops and putting arrows in real bad guys. He does travel rather exceedingly, leaving her alone most of the time, which he appreciates actually because she doesn't get to lie that much to his face. He is there for her when she needs him and according to her, he gives great hugs. He has a respectable job, a nice house and enough money in the bank to allow them to live a life without financial worries.

For a brief moment, he imagines them married, in front of a white-picketed house with a dog and two children, a boy and a girl, with blond hair – the image of a perfect family. She would work from home and take the kids to their extracurricular activities and he would throw barbeque parties for the neighborhood. Everybody would comment on how happy they look together and how smart their kids are. He would laugh and say that the kids take their intelligence after her and leave a peck on her cheek while she offered more nachos. They would go to the beach for summer vacations and she would tag along on some of his business trips, leaving the kids with his mother. They would sip homemade lemonade on the porch, watching their kids playing in the kid pool and then climb into bed together and read their own books before drifting off to sleep in each other's arms.

Just the idea of it makes him sick to his core. He is a selfish man, he reasons. He doesn't want her to have the perfect life and a family with a decent guy who could make her very happy. He doesn't want Paul to be the first person she sees when she wakes up and last before she falls asleep. He doesn't want him to be the person to put a smile on her face when he cracks a terrible joke. He doesn't want him to be the one getting to touch her, kiss her, make her shake with release in bed. No, he doesn't want Paul to be that person.

He wants to be that person even though he knows he cannot. He cannot give her the life she deserves, the happiness she needs. Yet he cannot help imagining. He wants to see her when she wakes up in his arms and fumbles for her glasses before she looks at him. He wants to sneak in while she showers and help her wash her long hair and then kiss her deeply under the water. He wants to hold her hand as they go through the aisles in the grocery store after she makes fun of how he actually never did grocery shopping in his life. He wants to hear her voice in his ears when he is on mission and then hear her say how it feels good to have him inside her, literally, during sex. He wants to kiss and taste her lips whenever he wants because he can. He wants to teach her how to shoot arrows and take her to vacations on a small, private island that doesn't involve landmines and a history with Chinese soldiers. He wants her to meet Thea and then have her try and change his mind about Roy.

He wants all the small things and the big things with her, to build a life with her and just be happy and make her happy. He knows being around him is dangerous, that she has already faced death because of him several times. Yet he knows that he just cannot be without her.

"I think I can love him. He is a really good guy and he makes me feel normal."

Her voice halts his thoughts. The word normal just stings him in his chest. No matter how hard he can try, he knows that normalcy is one thing he cannot have or give her. The world would be after him always either as Oliver Queen, the millionaire bad-boy CEO chased by the paparazzi or as the Arrow, chased by bad guys and authority figures. He would always be under someone's radar. He cannot be either of the personalities without the other. He doesn't know how to be simply the Oliver Queen of old times after all he has been through and he needs to use the Oliver Queen personality to give the Arrow an alibi and a reason to believe in himself after living his life as an asshole up until he got stranded on an island.

"I know the feeling is not there yet, but I think it can. He can make me happy." She finally looks up at him. He feels like her eyes are searching for something on his face.

At that point he wants to shout at her: How can you marry someone out of assumption? How can you give up your life just for the notion of something that doesn't exist yet? How can you be so sure about something you are unsure about? He wants to grab hold of her shoulders and shake her and bring her into realization.

For a girl who has just got proposed, he thinks she looks too sad. He has seen his share of newly engaged couples, or girls laughing and jumping and screaming out their happiness right after being proposed to either at the club or the social circles he has been in. Felicity looks like she is about to cry.

He thinks back about the time when she first met Paul. They had gone to a business party for a mission he already forgot the details of, under the pretense of representing Queen Consolidated in an attempt to get a hold of a microchip hidden in the ring of the host. Felicity started chatting up people around the host to give Oliver the opportunity to pickpocket the ring. When he was done, he realized that one of the guests was lingering around her more than necessary, and she laughed at whatever he said several times. He never knew whether she was faking it or not. They had exchanged business cards in front of his eyes and even though he expected that she would forget about him the very next day, apparently Paul was very insistent and a month later, she was dressed in a cocktail dress in the foundry, ready to leave for their third date.

He breathes in the chilly air, looking away. There are too many things he wants to say and so many he cannot. He wishes they lived in simpler circumstances where he was just a normal guy without the weight of the world on his shoulders and she was just a normal girl without the tendency to hack illegally into various servers. They could live a normal life that did not include secret meetings in secret lairs and secret missions to take out secret organizations and keeping secrets about their secret lives. He wouldn't live in a huge mansion alone and she wouldn't be kicked out of her apartment for hosting a scene of a crime.

"You cannot marry him." He breathes out, afraid that his voice is shaking.

Felicity is the eye of a storm. She is tense, her face is red, she opens her mouth several times. He sees her biting the insides of her cheeks. In an attempt to calm herself, he thinks, she rubs the bridge of her nose where her glasses reside. She takes a deep breath, then another. He tries to avoid her eyes but he cannot.

"You told me that you couldn't be with me." She starts. "After Russia. You told me you couldn't be with me, in between the lines. It was over a year ago." She pauses as her voice falters. "You and Digg encouraged me to date." She takes yet another deep breath. "Now you tell me I cannot marry him?"

He wants to say a lot of things. He wants to crack a joke about how beautiful she looks when she is angry. He wants to say that Russia and what he said afterwards was a mistake. He wants to say that he was an idiot for the encouragement and that it kills him to see her with Paul. He wants to tell her that a future without her beside him is nothing but a nightmare, worse than those he has about Lian Yu. He wants to reach out and touch her cheek and run his fingers through her curls. He wants to reassure her that nothing will ever happen between him and Laurel or any other woman simply because of the fact that they are not her.

He wants to tell her that he wants to be the one to meet her parents and travel to Central City with her, that he wants her at his side at family dinners, that he wouldn't embarrass her or himself by proposing in the middle of a restaurant.

"Oliver." His name on her lips is a whisper. "Say something."

He lets go off the breath he didn't know he was holding. "You cannot marry him." he repeats. "Felicity, you cannot marry someone you don't know you love."

His own words sounds like a cheesy line from an advice column. She is standing before him, cold and angry, expecting an explanation and all he comes up with is a stupid cliché. He momentarily wishes that he could turn back time by a second and come up with something better.

"Why?" her voice finally breaks and she turns her back to him, moving away from him. "Why can't I be the one to who gets to be happy?" he hears her say, questioning not him but mostly herself.

"Because I love you."

He expects that it should be a revelation. It is nothing but the truth. He loves her and wonders how long he has been keeping it a secret from himself, and her. He feels like if they were in a movie she had made him watch before, the sky would open and rain would fall, drenching them to the bone in seconds. Birds would start chirping in the middle of the night. Fireworks would light up the sky among shooting stars. Nothing like that happens because it is the real life and it is the truth, the only truth in his life. Oliver Queen is in love with Felicity Smoak. It is that simple, except it isn't.

She stops. He sees her wrap her arms around herself. Her head falls down. He wishes all of his strength to walk up to her, but he cannot. Instead he watches her as she opens the door and disappears inside her apartment. He wishes that a lighting would hit him because it would hurt less.

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A/N: So I woke up 7 in the morning on Sunday with a conversation and a scene between these idiots in my head and wrote two pages before I washed my face and this happened. The title is from The National's "Green Gloves" which doesn't make sense in the context of the story, but it was on while I was writing and basically the song is about imagining lives of your friends, coming up with your own scenarios and mostly missing them. Hope you like it! By the way, this can be read as a follow-up to my earlier 'Felicitations' story, but it isn't necessarily the continuation (but probably is in the same universe? I am not sure. Does this make any sense?) 


	2. Chapter 2

He exits the elevator, walks to his office with his head down and takes a quick glance. She is not at her desk, which is a worrisome sight for him because she hasn't had a late morning in the last two years she worked as his assistant and is always present when he arrives, no matter how much she hates it. He settles at his desk and has a brief chat with Digg on the phone, who doesn't happen to know where she is, and tries his best to stop himself from looking at her desk every other minute.

He sees her come in an hour later, just sit down at her desk and focus on the screens. A meeting of his is about to start and she doesn't even come in to inform him about the participants unlike how she always does. He takes his notepad and pen because he is still old-fashioned when it comes to technology and enters the meeting room, glancing at her direction as he passes by from the corner of his eye, but she does not look away from the computer screen, her face is the definition of concentration.

He can hardly understand a word during the meeting as his mind is elsewhere. He hopes that the fact that his mind is preoccupied by something else, by a certain someone, goes unnoticed. He looks around the meeting room and is glad to see that everyone is focused on the flip-charts. He pretends to take notes and nods from time to time to what is being discussed out of formality. He is out of the door the second he hears people thanking for participating in the meeting.

In seconds, he is at her desk, standing still, looking down at her. He has to clear his throat twice before she notices him and looks up.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see you." She quickly apologizes. The sight before him hurts like the time he stabbed himself by his own arrow to stop Malcolm Merlyn. Behind her glasses, he sees her eyes rimmed with red. "How was the meeting?"

"It was fine." he replies dryly, knowing that he couldn't give an honest answer no matter how hard he can try. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." she slurs over, moving her eyes away from him again. "You have another meeting in ten minutes." she says as she hands him a printed copy of his schedule for the day, like she always does. He barely registers what his day entails. He is worried about her and wants to do something but before he can act on it, his meeting partner comes in and she goes in business mode and walks up to show the way to the meeting room.

The following meetings go by in a similar fashion with him barely listening and being preoccupied with the fact that Felicity came in late and apparently cried sometime between the time he proclaimed his love and she showed up at work. He continues pretending to take notes and nods and fails to say a thing when his response is expected. He gets only two chances in between meetings to rush to her desk. The first time, she already left for lunch and doesn't come back until he goes for his first meeting in the afternoon and the second time, she has already left for her apartment.

He makes it in record time to the foundry in hopes that she would be there, or at least Digg would be so that he could let some things out of his chest, but he finds it empty. He lies down on the training mat and closes his eyes and stays in the same position, wishing his mind to be empty, his heart to be emotionless, his scars to fade away. Nothing happens and he just ends up spending two hours in the foundry in silence. Knowing that there is no Arrow business to take care of and that his partners will not be showing up, he heads home and goes to bed at a reasonable hour but cannot sleep.

The following day is a repetition of the one before. He comes into a Felicity-less office, she arrives late, avoids him, disappears between his meetings, does not talk to him during the brief time he gets to see her and leaves when it is time. He seeks out Digg to talk to him but there are interruptions and when there are none, he doesn't know where to start so he doesn't speak. Instead he suggests that they leave and go home and Digg offers a ride, but he prefers to ride his motorcycle to be alone with his thoughts.

He rides through the streets of the city he knows so well, passing by lights and people. The helmet allows him to blend in and just watch people without them acknowledging who he is. He likes the feeling of being anonymous. He feels like he can be anyone and hurt nobody. He imagines the lives of other people might be living. He looks at the middle-aged guy who is in the car next to him when they are waiting for the red-light to change, he imagines the life he has. He thinks he is probably working as a department head of a department in some company, with a wife and two daughters in college, paying mortgage and hearing about the Arrow on the local news from time to time but never really caring about it much. He wonders whether he knows he is in a car next the Arrow himself.

At the next lights, he stops near a woman around his age with a toddler in the safety-seat at the back who looks back at him. He imagines up a future for the little girl, thinking how she would become a tomboy and would actually dress up as him for one Halloween while the neighborhood kids make fun of her because the Arrow is a guy and she is a girl. He then fast-forwards some ten years into the future where the girl grows up to be a beautiful teenage girl and the head of the neighborhood gang who made fun of her years ago is secretly in love with her, but hides his feelings thinking she is out of his league. He thinks about the little girl and the hypothetical boy meeting years later in graduate school and falling in love, with her constantly teasing about how he made fun of her when they were little because secretly he had wanted to dress up as the Arrow himself.

The tall buildings of the city fade away as he gets farther away and gets closer to the mansion. As if on cue, the second he parks the motorcycle, he receives a text. "I am at the balcony." He is confused given the sender hasn't spoken to him in two days and more importantly, he is not sure which balcony she refers to. So he grabs his helmet and rushes to the balcony adjacent to his room and as expected, she is not there.

He rides the same way in the opposite direction for twenty minutes, this time not stopping to think at red lights, and arrives before her building. He makes his way up the same he did two nights ago, climbing the stairs and then making it to the roof, and jumping down to her balcony. She is standing in the corner, unaffected by the fact that he just jumped to her balcony.

"Hey." she says, looking up at him. She is still dressed in her work outfit, but her hair is loose, her feet are bare. He notices that she still has the green nail polish.

"Hi." he responds, hesitant to walk up to her. "Sorry I am late, I wasn't sure which balcony you were at." He catches a light smile on her lips and it gives him hope. "Want to talk?"

"Not really." She replies as she walks up to stand next to him. "Beautiful night."

He is just joyous that they are actually speaking to one another and that their initial conversation is simply mirroring that night. However, things are completely different. She is by now probably Paul's fiancée and he is just a guy who happens to help save the city in green leather, in love with her. The possibility kills the momentary joy he feels. Instead he opts to stand next to her and look over the city, thinking this might be the last night they could actually spend alone. The crescent moon is above them, the streets are busy, filled with noise. He feels like the only two sounds he hears are her breathing and his heart beating.

"I'm sorry I was terrible at being your assistant more than usual at work." she tells him after a few minutes of silence.

He smiles. "You have nothing to apologize for."

She turns around and rests her back on the railing. "I have this policy. I can only handle one bombshell per day."

He is confused. He expects her to be angry at him, or sad, or really happy given now that she is engaged to be married. He expects her to give him a silent treatment or just give him a run for his money by shouting at him and showing him that he is wrong, that she does not care about what he thinks, that she is going to elope with Paul and move with him to the mountains and spend the rest of her days away from technology and be happy and be loved. That she was mistaken and that she already loves him so deeply. That she is already pregnant with his triplets and that they are planning a winter wedding. That Paul makes her feel things she never thought were possible.

Instead she looks at him with her head turned slightly towards him. "A girl can only take so much. I cannot have your ex-girlfriend attacked in front of my own eyes only to be saved by her own sister who has been gone for a year, then have the guy I am dating propose to me, then…" she pauses. "Then have you tell me you love me."

The softness of her voice thrills him but he doesn't do or say anything. He just listens; and now that she has stopped speaking, he listens to her breathing. He wants to ask her why she is still dressed in her work clothes, why she asked him to meet here, why she isn't angry. He wants to ask when the wedding is and whether it would be awkward for her to work with him in either capacity, as Oliver Queen's assistant or the Arrow's right-hand, once she is married. "Felicity." he whispers her name like a sentence and it hangs in the air like a question he wants her to answer.

"Oliver, I…" she starts, then takes a breath and stops. "I tried really hard. I tried to get a hold of things. You just bombarded into my life and I never regretted it, not a single minute of it. I never questioned it. I never regretted that stupid laptop with the bullet holes or your terrible lies. Even though I paid a lot of money to get rid of the bloodstains, I never regretted that you showed up in my car shot, pleading me to take you to the foundry."

"And you regret it now?"

"No." Her answer is simple. She pauses for a second, looks above at the sky, and then closes her eyes. "After Russia, you told me you couldn't be with someone you could care for because of the Arrow business. After you killed the Count for me, you said there was no choice to make, I got confused but I stopped making sense of it. So I started trying. I moved on. I found someone I could care about. It took a lot of effort and convincing."

He knows that now is the time for him to leave and let go off Felicity Smoak and let her live the life she deserves and he wants her to have. He doesn't want another day in her life where she goes on lying to the people she cares about, to the people she loves. He wants her to be happy with Paul who she could love. He wants to see her wedding registry and buy the most expensive item because he can and money is of no issue and maybe he can even pitch in for the wedding expenses. He wants to see her in a wedding gown and put a peck on her cheek at the reception and tell her she looks beautiful because she does, and ask her for a dance and leave before they get to dance, walk away and never come back. He wants get out of her life forever despite desperately wanting to be the person she gives her vows to and leaves the reception with to start off the rest of their lives.

He decides that if he can run and lift himself up to the edge of the roof, which shouldn't be a problem, then he can run across and jump to the next roof and be away from her before he changes his mind or she comes after him. He can go home, pack a bag, call Thea and tell her that he is sorry and then disappear to Lian Yu and stay there until someone convinces him otherwise. He is pretty sure that he would not come back again. He would make people around him stop suffering because of his existence, and he would have a simple existence in that island he knows so well. He would forget about Felicity Smoak and give her a chance to forget him. She would go back to the IT department she loved so much, or find another job, or move to Europe with Paul and learn another language, travel and eat something other than Chinese take-out, and be happy and forget that she spent two years of her life in a dark lair, in front of computers, giving him directions. She would be happy and that would make him happy for life.

He hesitantly moves to bring his plan into action but her voice stops him. "You are right." He moves his body swiftly yet unsurely so that they are now standing face to face. "Usually it is John who is right about stuff, but this time it is you."

"Right about what?" He feels like despite how hard he is trying to keep his calm demeanor intact, it is failing and she can read him like a book, like she usually does.

She sighs, avoids his eyes. "I cannot marry Paul." He doesn't know how to process the information. He is unsure whether he should just take her in his arms and do a twirl in excitement or do his own victory dance. He feels like popping champagne and throwing confetti and laughing like kids. Instead he stays still, looking at her face, searching for an explanation, a reason. "I am going to ramble, but I don't want to, so I think it is your turn to say something now."

The ball is in his court. Moments ago, he was imagining her future tied to someone else. Now, she is in agreement with him and not someone else's future bride. Or at least he thinks so, given she just said she couldn't marry Paul. He wonders if the joy he is feeling deep inside is reflected in his body language. "So you said no?" he asks just to have everything confirmed. She nods as a response. "Is that why you cried yesterday?" She nods again. "Did you cry because you two broke up?" She nods for the last time. He wishes she would use her words, but realizes that she is doing it on purpose so he would use his instead. "I think I should be sorry, but to be honest, I really am not."

"You are not sorry I cried?" She sounds offended.

"I am not sorry you two broke up." he responds. "I know what I said last year after Russia. I was an idiot. I told you I couldn't be with someone I could really care about, but I didn't realize that I was…" he stops. He starts laughing at himself, as the truth clear as day hits him in the face. "I think I loved you when I said thanks after you saved my life that first time, when I showed up in your car, and we shook hands and you just shied away. I am sorry I didn't act on it and pushed you away instead."

"Apology accepted."

He feels like the smile creeping on his face is the biggest, the most genuine one he has ever had, probably larger than those he has faked for years. It is real, he feels it at the very core of his being, and it is mirrored by the one on her face. They stand still, grinning at one another. He does not remember another time he has been happier. "I think your policy does not apply to me?" he asks, the smile still present. She looks at him questioningly. "Your bombshell rule? You just dropped two of them on me."

"No, that's just for me. Remember it for future references." She grins again. She holds out and places her small hand in his and he links their fingers immediately, then takes a look at the image of their hands together, burning it into memory. He hopes she doesn't mind the sweat in his palms as she runs her fingertips against his knuckles. "It's cold." she states. "Let's go inside and you can show me how much you love me." She stops and clears her throat. "That doesn't mean that I am going to sleep with you right now because you haven't even taken me out for a date. I have a three-date rule before sleeping with someone. I might have broken it once before, it might happen again, but there are no guarantees. And no, you are not my rebound. I think I made Paul your rebound. Not that you and I were together back then." she pauses and takes a deep breath. "I need some wine. And it really is cold outside."

He follows her as she leads them inside. "I really missed your rambling." It is a simple truth. She looks at him and he leans down to finally capture her lips with his.

THE END.

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**A/N**: Thank you so much for reading! Comments much appreciated!


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